Autism in the News – Thursday, 10.21.10

Utah lawmakers explore Medicaid waiver for children with autism (Salt Lake City, Utah)
On average, about one in 110 children in the United States has an autism spectrum disorder, while in Utah the ratio is approximately one in 130. Soon-to-be-released figures will likely show an even greater prevalence of the disorder, according to Michael Hales, director of the state Division of Medicaid and Health Financing, and that means a greater demand for services for children with ASD and a great need for assistance for the children’s parents who are the primary caregivers. Read more.

Preschool class open to abled, disabled kids (Upper Township, N.J.)
At the end of a hallway called “Caring and Sharing Road,” Upper Township Primary School’s youngest students sit on a blue rug decorated with numbered fish as teacher Theresa Bryan reviews the day’s agenda: art class, cupcakes for a birthday, a book about pumpkins. Read more.

Dance, baby, dance! (India)Although dance therapy is a relatively new profession, it is based on the assumption that the body and mind are in constant reciprocal interaction. Motion influences body image and leads from a change in body image to a change in psychic attitude. Read more.

Hi-Lo Reaches Out To Best Care (Jamaica)In a bid to ensure that children with special needs are equipped with the knowledge and skills needed to become productive members of society, Hi-Lo Food Stores recently presented the Best Care Foundation with an education grant. Read more.

Visit to N.J. pharmaceutical company helps disabled students focus on their abilities (East Hanover)It wasn’t an ordinary field trip for 50 students who visited the Novartis pharmaceutical company yesterday. Read more.

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Just discovered this on facebook. “TalkTablet” is an upcoming (Dec/2010) speech app for the iPad/iPod that looks like it will compete directly with Proloquo2go. It is a symbol based speech app for autism.

This post is not being very precise and because of that is somewhat misleading.

“half of the increase is still unexplained and not due to better diagnosis, greater awareness, and social factors alone. ”

Is misleading. Not all social factors have been tested.

Also, it may be naive to think that all social factors can be quantified. How do you quantify the fact that we still are not consistent in how we assign diagnoses? Catherine Lord went into detail about this in her recent talk at an NIH workshop.

Lastly, the work by Peter Bearman’s group was on autism, not ASD. Much of the increase in prevalence in your graph is due to the inclusion of non-autism ASD’s.

It is just this sort of imprecise and selective use of data that has promoted much of the misinformation about autism prevalence.